[RetailEdge Moderator]

One of the most common questions we get is how to enter and sell an item that you:

1. don't want to track inventory quantities for, or
2. don't want enter an inventory item for each one of the items, or
3. want a way to sell items before you have entered your inventory into the system.

One way to do this is to create a department SKU item. Every item in RetailEdge has to have a Stock Type assigned to it. Most items in inventory will have a stock type "Stock" This means that when you receive it, the item's inventory quantity is incremented and when it is sold the item's inventory quantity is decremented. In addition, when you sell a "Stock" item, RetailEdge calculates the cost of the item sold as the average cost of the inventory item at the time of sale. However, when an item in your inventory represents a group of items using average cost of an item may not accurately reflect the items cost

Department SKU items are items that when sold, do NOT use the cost information associated with the inventory item, but use the Department's average margin to calculate the cost of the item when sold. This is useful when you are making price changes to an item on the Sales Screen, but don't want your margins affected by the price change. Also, unlike a Stock item, the inventory quantities are NOT reduced or increased when sold or received. Department item when put into your inventory with a $0.00 price will automatically prompt you for a selling price when entered on the Sales Screen.

A Department SKU item the cost is calculated based on the average margin for the department associated with the item. For instance, if I have a department X that has an average margin of 50%. If I create a Department SKU item ABC associated with department X, then when I sell the item for $5.00 RetailEdge calculates that the cost of the item is $2.50. If I sell it again for $3.00, RetailEdge calculates that has a cost of $1.50.

Some businesses that Department SKUs work for are:

1. Grocery stores that don't want to enter inventory. Some smaller grocery stores are automatically restocked by the distributor/vendor. This allows a grocery store point of sale to operate almost like a cash register (department 1, 5.95, department food, 7.99, etc.) but will allow them to get a better handle on cost of goods sold.

2. Flower store point of sale systems, may only carry a few items (e.g, cut flowers, arrangements, teleflora, etc.). Without having to enter every type of flower and then track the inventory going out in an arrangement, a department SKU can help track cost of goods sold for these "general" department items. For instance cut flowers might only have a markup of 100% and an arrangement might have a 300% markup. They would create a department with the proper margin for each different markup category and then associate the Department SKU item with the proper department.

3. Any business that wants to quickly start selling items before they have gotten all of their inventory into the program. Creating 10-20 department SKUs first will allow you to sell items quickly and get a good handle on your general cost of goods sold and know what departments you are selling out of until you get your inventory stock items into RetailEdge. As things start getting entered you can then scan the barcodes on the items that have labels and continue to sell the Department Skus until you gradually phase out the Department Skus and only have barcoded inventory items.

A few more related topics can be found at

How to handle Tips or Gratuities in RetailEdge

http://www.retailedge.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=944

Non Stock Items (alternative to)

http://www.retailedge.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=733

Selling item before your inventory is entered

http://www.retailedge.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=983